Still from AJE residency 2023
WHAT’S HAPPENING now?
Switchgrass Film Workshop
JUNE 2-8, 2024 in Yuma, Colorado, we are gearing up for our third annual film lab.
Sign up @ hello@prairieseaprojects.org.
Last year, youth filmmakers learned camera and field sound recording, Garage Band, Premiere Pro and screened their work (group video poetry, observational place-based filming, creating compositions from found sound and fiction shorts) at the local movie theatre.
This year our specialty medium in addition to fiction and nonfiction storytelling will be animation! We are thrilled to welcome local artist, animator and former set designer of Veral, Shayna Mason, as our Youth Mentor.
2023 Films and Profiles
STEP documentaries
Seth Boyden Elementary School’s answer to the aftermath of the pandemic was STEP dancing. With the support of the PTA, and over four years I have shot and edited 4 short documentaries about the evolving STEP culture that has transformed this student body.
Here are two of those videos; 2023 is a process video culminating in the final performance and 2024 a sizzle reel. The latest video will be presented at the 2024 AIE fundraiser, SOMA District school board and for other granting organizations as well as at Seth Boyden Elementary.
These videos helped to secure continued funding from The Artists in Education Residency Grant Program (AIE), a co-sponsored project of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and Young Audiences Arts for Learning NJ & Eastern PA. It is carried out in partnership with regional partners Appel Farm Arts & Music Campus, Count Basie Center for the Arts, and Morris Arts. Dance to Learn Residency Grant courtesy of Dance New Jersey.
STEP 2023 performance in the making at Seth Boyden Elementary School
STEP 2024 school performance
portfolio
Reel
producing, directing, camera, editor
One-Woman Band
Short Docs
Short Fiction
Music
Long-Form and Feature Docs
Fiction Features
Workshops
in development
AJE is a dramatic fantasy series connecting a bloodline of women over 200 years, starting with the last so-called "Indian War" and ending in the apocalypse of 2090. Natane, a Native American teenager, is led to preserve the bodies of her ancestors and extract the missing narratives of the brutal high plains town of Aje. Each episode focuses on a different decade, with a finale surrendering to time as we know it.
Long-time collaborator Erin Greenwell and I visited the Alma Creative Residency at Prairie Futures in Joes, CO. We finished writing a pilot and traversed the high plains with our Super 8 camera, capturing a mood reel for the series, AJE. Stills and excerpts will be published in The Prairie Futures Journal 2024. Release date to follow.
*Images: Top: Beecher’s Island (photo credit unknown) Middle: diorama reenactment of the Battle of Beecher Island (photo credit unknown) Bottom: Sally Mann
From the archives
Music video release, DIRTY MINDZ, (2023) on GroundUp Records, featuring Snarky Puppy violinist Zach Brock.
After a shoot in Colorado, a successful Seed&Spark fundraising campaign, a COVID hiatus, and a final small-scale shoot where we captured miniatures and a diorama, VERAL emerged!
To learn more about the project and see production stills, please click “SHORT FICTION”
VERAL is a neo-Gothic horror short
On the High Plains, a city-slicker journalist meets a mysterious girl who leads him through her museum of preserved townies. "No pictures," she warns. Breaking the rules may cost him more than his deadline.
VERAL trailer
This video shows our process from live-action greenscreen to our 1:6 diorama shoot and how we integrated the two shoots through visual effects for the final movie. This is an excellent window into pre-covid and post-covid production.
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